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Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 15:21:18 +0100
From: Digby Tarvin <digbyt@acm.org>
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] partition sizes and home directories
Message-ID: <20051025142118.GA27635@skaro.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk>
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I would strongly recomend putting the home directory on its own
partition. It then doesn't matter too much where you decide to mount
it, although some broken applications may assume the Linux convention
of using /home, so it is probably safest to preserve this and use a
sym link if you want to be able to use the /usr/home you are familiar
with.

Always keep the root partition small and relatively stable, since it
is minimal platform from which the rest of the system can be recovered.

I keep mine to about 20M, so I don't need to keep a separate /boot
partition. /tmp is a sym link to /var/tmp, so that in secure mode
/var and /home are the only two filesystems that should need to be
mounted read/write. The former is writeable space for the system, and the
latter for users. Other filesystem should only need to be made writeable
when modifying the sytstem if everything is configured right.

In practice there are still some annoying exceptions (like /etc/passwd
and /etc/mtab) which mean you have to do a bit more work to get the
root filesystem able to be mounted readonly, but if it is small it
doesn't take so long to back it up and fsck it after a crash, so
it is probably only worth worrying about it for a secure system.

Regards,
DigbyT

On Tue, Oct 25, 2005 at 09:44:23AM +0000, sean wrote:
> I know this can be a tough call on how to partition a drive, but I am 
> looking for some input.
> 
> My system will be used as for my own personal use, no server for 
> outside, though I may run a web server for private in home use, some 
> games, whatever I wish to play and experiment.
> 
> Users, mainly just me, and perhaps a family member or three.
> Here is what I quickly setup.
> 
> $ df -h
> Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/hda3             471M  271M  176M  61% /
> udev                 1004M  208K 1004M   1% /dev
> /dev/hda1              38M  2.6M   34M   8% /boot
> /dev/hda5             4.6G  185M  4.2G   5% /var
> /dev/hda6              31G  2.3G   27G   8% /usr
> shm                  1004M     0 1004M   0% /dev/shm
> 
> What caught me off guard was that fact that /home is located under / and 
> that is where my user profiles are being set, instead of /usr/home like 
> it is on my freebsd system.
> When I copied over my personal files, it quickly filled up the / 
> partition, which I have since deleted.
> Now I noticed that there is a /usr/home, what exactly is that used for, 
> since users are not there by default?
> 
> I would figure /boot does not really change much in size, leave as is, 
> maybe shrink a few mb.
> /var, up and down, perhaps bring it down a gig, gig and a half.
> /usr, would grow depending on software installs, much as possible. I 
> have not installed much currently.
> If /home was on its own, I am guessing that the current / allocation 
> would be fine?
> Anyone confirm?
> Now I just have to figure what I want /home to be, or perhaps could the 
> default setup for users be located in /usr/home?
> Would this cause problems?
> Is it non standard?
> 
> 					Thanks
> 					Sean
> -- 
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                             digbyt@digbyt.com
http://www.digbyt.com
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